brain, a languor as of exhausted limbs, comes upon me with the memory.
The relief with which I stepped out into the street again, when all was
over! Dear to me then was poverty, which for the moment seemed to make
me a free man. Dear to me was the labour at my desk, which, by
comparison, enabled me to respect myself.

Never again shall I shake hands with man or woman who is not in truth my
friend. Never again shall I go to see acquaintances with whom I have no
acquaintance. All men my brothers? Nay, thank Heaven, that they are
not! I will do harm, if I can help it, to no one; I will wish good to
all; but I will make no pretence of personal kindliness where, in the
nature of things, it cannot be felt. I have grimaced a smile and
pattered unmeaning words to many a person whom I despised or from whom in
heart I shrank; I did so because I had not courage to do otherwise. For
a man conscious of such weakness, the best is to live apart from the
world. Brave Samuel Johnson! One such truth-teller is worth all the
moralists and preachers who ever laboured to humanise mankind. Had _he_
withdrawn into solitude, it would have been a national loss. Every one
of his blunt, fearless words had more value than a whole evangel on the
lips of a timidly good man. It is thus that the commonalty, however well
clad, should be treated. So seldom does the fool or the ruffian in
broadcloth hear his just designation; so seldom is the man found who has
a right to address him by it. By the bandying of insults we profit
nothing; there can be no useful rebuke which is exposed to a _tu quoque_.
But, as the world is, an honest and wise man should have a rough tongue.
Let him speak and spare not!



XIV.